In conventional bagel manufacturing, bagel dough is extruded and cut into chunks of predetermined size. The chunks are passed through equipment that rolls each chunk of dough into a “cigar” shape, folds the shaped dough back upon itself and joins the ends to form a dough ring. The equipment may comprise a belt, a mandrel and a sleeve for example. The dough ring may then be further processed and baked to create a bagel food product.
The above-described manner of bagel manufacture presumes the use of a bagel dough having a relatively firm consistency. Such dough may for example be less than fifty percent water.
Artisan dough, such as ciabatta dough, may be more than seventy-five percent water by weight. The consistency of artisan dough is much less firm than that of the bagel dough described above. For example, artisan dough may be considered to have a gummy, sticky or batter-like consistency. As such, the passing of artisan dough through the above-described type of bagel manufacturing equipment is unlikely to result in the desired dough ring. Rather, the equipment might cause the dough to stretch or tear. If that occurs, an undesirable clogging or gumming up of the equipment may result. It is perhaps for this reason that bagels made from artisan dough are relatively uncommon in the marketplace at the time of this writing.